The car is for sale! Rationale being that we feel that she has at least one more rally in her and need someone who will take her on the next adventure. It’s wrong to cage a wild animal after all! Feel free to check out our little one here:

After 4 weeks of trials, tribulations, tears, trauma and triumph; we’re home! We’ve had a fantastic time, even though the rally was changed dramatically the day before we left. Due to the increased security concerns both before we left and also in late December, we decided against travelling further south than Morocco, and instead chose to see if she could make the round trip – all the way back to Devon!

In all, our trusty chariot has completed just over 8,000 kilometers, including many hundreds on what can only be described as tracks. from off-roading to snow driving, we’ve really put the car through it’s paces and she came back as sweet as she left (although with a couple of additional “features”). To say that we have fallen in love with her would be a bit over dramatic, but we are pretty fond of the old girl and how well she has served us. We will however, be letting her go (most likely on ebay in a few days time) to a new home who will hopefully be kind and maybe even sometimes let her out to play off road.

As far as the ‘kilometre guesses’ went, we thought it fairest to put all names in a hat and draw out a winner for the stay at Bovey Castle. The guesses that were made were for a different trip to the one we ended up doing, for which I apologise. So without further ado, the winner is……

BECKY MOORE – Congratulations.

All that’s left to say, is thanks for reading, we hope you’ve enjoyed our blog and photos. Feel free to check the same website later in the year, we might just be gearing up for another challenge

We’re in northern Morocco now. We have been down through the high atlas mountains and to the Sahara, near the Algerian border. The photo’s don’t really do the scenery justice, but then most people say that don’t they?

We forgot to mention in our blog yesterday, but some chaps offered us four camels for the pug. We considered this offer, and even spoke to Brittany Ferries to see if we could transfer our ferry booking to a camel but they wouldn’t do it so we turned it down.

Four camels seemed like a fair price, but on reflection, we think we chose correctly. The running costs of the pug are probably less….

Hello! We’ve spent the last few days driving on ‘Pistes’ across Morocco. We have given the car hell of a battering and both of us are amazed that its still in one piece! The sump guard is completely ruined and we have added a few large dents to the sump of the engine. We have worked out one thing though, the car is not up to much on the sand. We aren’t giving away too many details of our location or route at the moment as I hope you’ll understand.

Morocco hasn’t let us down once, and the people are generally really nice and friendly. Some of them are a little hard selling but most of them you can have a joke with which is excellent. Beards are coming along well also – we know this as we get mistaken for locals

We will post some more photos in a couple of days when we are further north but for now, check out the following:

What else is there to say about Marrakesh apart from ‘amazing’. The city is a sensory overload as you walk around the Souks and Medina’s. We’ve had an enjoyable couple of days for our Christmas break and loved all the experiences. We are heading in to the Atlas mountians tomorrow for some off roading and then some beach driving so will not be around for a few days. Until then, here’s some photo’s.

We have been in Morocco for two days now and it has been pretty challenging. We managed to get a very rough crossing from Algeciras to Ceuta when most were cancelled due to the poor weather. The next challenge was the border crossing in to Morocco which was never going to be easy. We paid a ‘fixer’ a few euros and he helped us get the necessary paperwork sorted. Crossing the border was a real experience-being herded around different officials by ‘Mohammed’ and watching the locals jumping the border fences.

We didn’t want t0 drive too far yesterday after the border crossing but went to a town called Chefchoun which is located high up in the Rif mountains where we camped for the first time on the trip. Several times on the way through the country roads we were offered hash, which we didn’t take them up on!

We woke up this morning to lashing rain and high winds to have to dismantle our soaking tents and crack on with the drive to Azrou via Meznes. This was the most bizarre journey we’ve had – coming across a lorry that had lost it’s back axle going around a corner and countless other vehicles broken down. The bad weather had caused severe flooding on some of the roads we had planned to drive. The convoy came to a stop when a river burst its banks and was over a foot deep cascading across a road. Some trucks managed to get through, but after watching a transit van almost get washed away we decided that another route was the only option. This other route was on more flooded roads and we came across a great deal of damage caused by the recent downpours. After a few dodgy towns – we made it to Azrou for an early night and to recover before Christmas in Marrakesh tomorrow, as long as we can avoid the flooded roads some more!

Merry Christmas everyone if we don’t get chance to blog again before then.

Well, we’ve made it to Tarifa in one piece. The car is running a bit better following some new plugs and a few changes to the mixture. Problems keep occuring with the car though, but none that ar going to stop us!

We have met with the other teams now in the hotel and have 36 hours to get our stuff together and get ready for the crossing.

The drive down through Spain has been long but enjoyable. As you can probably tell from the blog, we were less than impressed with Benidorm, so we decided to stay away from the main resorts. Think we went from one extreme to another and stayed in the ‘badlands’ of Spain. Anyway, photo’s below…

We left our appartment in Andorra yesterday morning for the drive to Barcelona and decided to risk the mountain pass given how good the visibility was. We were pretty lucky with the weather and it has to be the most amazing roads I have ever driven on. Photo’s below don’t really do it justice but give you a taste of what we experienced. My particular favourite being the third photo below.

In Barcelona but leaving in a short while for a drive down the coast towards Alicante. Not too sure how far we will get but Need to be in Tarifa for the 21st.

So we left Ray’s (with suprisingly not very sore heads given the previous nights antics) and headed south through some really picturersque towns and villages towards Toulouse to pick Shelley up for Skiing.

Getting to Andorra was somewhat challenging though. By the time it had started to get dark the temperature dropped considerably to around -10 and the roads were getting more and more treturous. We decided to stop and fork out for some snow chains as the roads were turning into mostly just ice – they proved to be a really wise investment and we wouldn’t have made Andorra without them.

Car wasn’t feeling the love for the cold air either, but she’s still going. As we approached Andorra we picked up the next obvious fault – notably the passenger door swinging open when going around corners. We’ll take a look at this when we have finished skiing!

Below are some photos of the last couple of days. In order – the pug avec snow chains, parked up at the appartment, the view from the top of the ski lift, Chris learning on the busy slopes and one of all of us on the chair lift.